Are we there yet?

I had an interesting conversation on the train home the other day with Stephen Parker about this book, interesting enough for me to come home and google it and blog about it.

Changing Images of Man

Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) released a report in 1974 that has become a classic in the "alternative futures" literature. It
has been adopted as a text in non-traditional courses at more
than a dozen universities and reprinted repeatedly by SRI.

Changing Images of Man explores the reasons why changes may have to take place in the fundamental conceptual premises, laws, attitudes and ethics once suitable for guiding the development of the United States and other highly industrialized nations if a humane (and "workable") future is to be achievable.

I was intrigued and amazed that 34 years later the characteristics actually reflect the buzzwords of the society and the workplace. Social engineering? What do you think?

.....A provisional list of characteristics of a new vision of the world, published in 1974

(1) a holistic sense of perspective on life,

(2) an ecological ethic,

(3) a self-realization ethic,

(4) multi-leveled, multifaceted, and integrative,

(5) balance and coordination of satisfactions along many dimensions, and

(6) experimental and open-ended.

It discusses the evidence that such changes may be occurring and the possibility
that an evolutionary transformation may be underway that is at least as profound
as the transition in Europe when the Medieval Age gave way to the rise of
science and the Industrial Revolution. SYSTEMS SCIENCE AND WORLD ORDER LIBRARY
-- Explorations of World Order 255 pages - 1974, 1982 O.W. Markley, Willis W.
Harman (DIGICAM PHOTOS OF ORIGINAL - PDF FORMAT

)